too costly. At last, forestry officers in Kiasi
announced: "Kesho, piga nyundo." Tomor
row would be the day of the hammering,
when poles would be counted, marked by the
hammer, and bought.
Heavy downpours accompanied the day of
reckoning. The crowded longboats went
from bank to bank where cutters had ferried,
in their slender canoes, poles from farther
up the creeks. Nakhodas, sailors, African
officials, and cutters scrambled through knee
deep mud to the piles of boriti, stacked in
lines of 20 poles, one above another, for
marking by the hammer. Cutters clustered
round the cashbox and carefully counted
their earnings: less than $4 for a score of
poles-and a tax was levied on that.
At the end of the long, wet, chaotic day,
the nakhodas agreed that there were far too
few poles and ordered more. Then, day after
day, they boated up remote creeks carrying
dates and maize meal to the cutters and lo
cating sailboats-tishalis-that would bring
the poles to the dhows.
"Taabu sana," said Issa every evening
when he returned, rain-soaked and frus
trated. But slowly the dhows began to fill.
The sailors kept careful count as each pole
came on board, sonorously chanting the
number in Arabic, Swahili, Persian.
"Wahid, ithnen, thelatha, arbaa." "Moja,
mbili, tatu, nne." "Yek, do, seh, cher.... " At
twenty, both sailor and tishali captain tied a
knot in a cord, looped perhaps round a toe,
and began again (page 351).
Finally, the nakhodas met with officials
for the hesabu, the total tally that had to be
recorded and approved by customs. Between
them, our four dhows had bought more than
2,000-score poles. The word was: "We go
tomorrow-Inshallah."
Provisioning for the Voyage Home
A month after we had sailed south we
returned to Mombasa. Issa rushed to coffee
merchants, to the city market, to the small
stores. He bought tea, coffee, pineapple
chunks, tamarind, sesame oil, coconut oil,
ghee, charcoal. Mihandust was carrying home
half the crew of the sunken Ahmediyya, an
Lounging amid the splendor of Persian rugs and Arabian chests, dhow captains
wait to haggle with tourists and traders from Kenya in the cool recesses of Mom
basa's Old Port customs warehouse. Offshore, a Lamu dhow (right) drives south
before a northeast monsoon, shuttling cargo between African ports.
National Geographic,September 1974
348